The Night Shift Almanac, Vol. 3: The Care Shift

About this book

Between midnight and six in the morning, while the city sleeps, a second city stays awake to look after it. This is the care shift: the duty pharmacist counting out patience under a fluorescent hum, the night vet whose waiting room is never as empty as it looks, the dispatcher who tells strangers that help is on the way and makes it true, the blood bank technician alone with his cold and quiet library, the aides and porters and nurses who sit with the dying and catch the being-born. Ten new stories, each stamped with the hour it keeps. Some are as real as a fever at 1 a.m. Some are quietly impossible. Most live in the narrow corridor between.